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Folia Dispersa 



Poems of 



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William Cranston Lawton 



%% 




New York The Corell Press 
& The Press of the Classical 
School Associated 1895 



[me 1896 




Copyright 1895 

BY 

WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON 



To 
My Wife. 
The assurance which thou dost not need," 



4 

Note. 

This little collection of verses has been made, without 
the request or encouragement of anyone, in order to 
detach them finally from the author's mind, — and for 
other reasons hardly more cogent, indicated within. 
The order is, roughly, that of production, so far as it 
could he recalled. The earliest and largest venture 
was included after some hesitation. However, it had 
already been printed, and may at least serve to illus- 
trate the fluency in rhyme, {without adequate motif), 
which deserts most of us with our 'teens. The other 
numbers include all the verse, written since manhood 
was reached, which could make the slightest claim to 
inclusion. Each utterance was a necessary and im- 
pulsive one at the moment. Doubtless m the desk of 
almost any lover of poetry, quite as many and as 
ambitious leaflets are more safely concealed. For his 
first slender roll Catullus prayed with lofty and 
modest prophetic vision : 

Plus uno maneat perenne saeclo. 

Our only wish is, we trust, more truly humble : May 
these rhymes find gentle and uncritical readers, if any ! 



FOLIA DISPERSA. 



Envoi .... 

In Vacation 

Parting of the Ways 

Nostalgia .... 

**Ere a Thousand Years are Told' 

La Commedia Finita 

Assos Remembered . 

With a Version of Alcestis 

In Athens 

In Morte Immtttabilitas 

My Fatherland 

Carolo Morttto 

Netie Friihlingsnacht 

Liebe in der Feme 

The Colonel's Fiftieth Birthday 

On a Photograph 

Two Greetings 

Columbia College Chapel 

''Ho Pretty PageT' 

Eastward Windows. 

Les Reines de PAmour 

Memories 

Notes .... 



Pagb 

7 
8 
J4 
J5 
16 
18 
20 
2J 
22 
23 
25 
27 
28 
29 
3J 
32 
33 
34 
37 
40 
4J 
42 
46 






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7 

ENVOI. 




OOR in all else, but rich in loving friends 
Is he who offers them this little book. 
If they, ere now, he doubts not, justly, took 
Offense at reckless act or word, he sends 
These leaves, in hope therefor to make amends 
So far, at least, that into every nook 
And secret of his heart they here may look, 
And see, — the love that still on them attends. 



No fine-wrought fancies, deep-delved thoughts, he brings. 
The harp of life has few and simple strings. 

And every chord has rung a thousand times 
To the firm touch of masters new and old. 
Man's heart is one, tho' speech be manifold: 

And love, mirth, sorrow, throb in all our rhymes ! 



8 



IN VACATION, 




I8-J2. 

HILE lingering shadows by me pass, 
Slowly, across the whispering grass, 
Long musing have I lain beside 
The tranquil lake Unnoticed glide, 
As shrills the cricket's measured tune, 
The golden hours of afternoon. 
Within the lake reflected lie 
The circling groves of pine and yew, 



The f[tecy clouds that fleck the sky, 

And deeper yet the arched blue : 
Ay, even birds that o'er it skim, 
Or reeds that nod along the brim. 
Each ruffling breeze that o'er it flies 
Upon the margin quickly dies; 
And where the gleaming pickerel springs, 
Soon widening fade the rippling rings. 
Beneath yon pine-capt island's shade, 
With listless hand and dripping blade, 
My comrades stay their little boat. 
Jheir voices softly toward me float. 



Beyond, two oxen with their load 
Toil slow along the lakeside road. 
Dotted with fields of billowy wheat, 

And farmers' cottages quaint and brown, 
The long low hills encircling meet: 

Shut in the valley; shut out the town. 



As a cathedral vast and dim. 

The grove aloft its arches weaves; 
And many a trunk, huge dark and grim, 
And many a gay upreaching limb; 

Uphold the domes of shimmering leaves. 
Yet thro' innumerable rifts 
The slanting sunlight downward sifts : 
And where it breaks the twilight gray 
The wild bee glimmers on his way; 
The squirrel frolics overhead; 
The rabbit glides with noiseless tread, 
Half-seen, thro' vistas of the wood, 
Whose sacred peace and solitude 
Are lightened by the faroff song 
Of birds that in the foliage throng. 



lO 



And amid the murmur of bee and bird 

The complaining voice of the brook is heard, 

That toward the lake goes winding down. 

Round many a boulder bare and brown, 

Round many a sturdy gnarled root, 

The foaming hurrying waters shoot; 

Over them leans the pale wild rose; 

On many a knoll the violet blows. 

The redcapt mosses brightly burn 

About the stumps of fallen trees; 
Daintily, gracefully, waves the fern 

Upon the breath of the faintest breeze. 
Now and again the hurrying rill 
A moment loiters, slow and still. 
Upon its bosom, wider grown. 
Shadows of wood and sky are thrown. 
The cresses float upon the brim; 

The waterspiders dart about; 
The tiny minnows idly swim ; 
Beneath the bank in shadow dim. 

Securely lurks the mottled trout. 
Not long the waters idly stay; 
The brook goes hurrying on its way, * 
Murmuring a song of vague unrest, 



1 1 

That finds an echo in my breast. 
Yonder its current leaves the shade, 

Glitters a moment in the sun, 
Hurries over a v^hite cascade 

Into the lake: its course is run. 

A gloomy melancholy mood 

O'er the old forest seems to brood. 

From the mighty throbbing soul 

That dwells v^ithin the oak's dark bole, 

Not yet may flying years eflace 

The memories of a vanished race. 

With drooping boughs and quivering leaves 

The forest for her children grieves, 

Who once beneath these arches dwelt; 

Who by yon murmuring brooklet knelt. 

Upon the margin of the wood 

The village of the wigwams stood. 

The old men sat beneath the pines 

And told again their deeds of yore, 
Or cast their birch-bark fishing-lines 

From frail canoes, moored off the shore. 
With shout and laughter echoing shrill 

The hamlet's naked children swung 



12 



In grape-vines from the branches hung, 
Or gathered berries on the hill. 

— Or beneath the forest's moonlit arch 
Along yon path the warriors filed, 
With nodding plumes and war-paint wild, 

Bending their grim and noiseless march 
To where the village of their foes 
Lay wrapt in silence and repose. 

Or through the gloom and hush of night, 
Guided alone by the firefly's light. 
The voung brave and his dusky bride, 

Within their fragile birch canoe, 
With loitering hand the paddle plied. 

And over rippling waters flew. 
They heard the sighing of the sedge, 
The babbling waves on the pebbly edge, 
And from the pines the breeze offshore 
A faint and balmy odor bore. 
Sweeter to her his whispered words 
Than laugh of waves or twitter of birds. 
Sweeter than breezes with fragrance laden 
Upon his brown cheek breathed the maiden. 



13 

Perchance upon this mossy stone 
A sad-faced dreamer sat alone, 
And gazing on the breezy lake 

Beheld the ripples across it swept 
Upon the margin quickly break : — 

And with prophetic sadness wept, 
Knowing that so, without a trace 
Should melt away the red man's race. 




H 



PARTING OF THE WAYS. 




{England, i88i.) 

AY not the eaglet never loved the nest 

Because, full-fledged, he cannot choose but know 
True life is aspiration and not rest. 

With haunting eyes reproachful, to and fro 

In my soul's sight forever come and go 
The shapes of those who loved me first and best. 

Reproach me not! I could not love you so, 
Were life not spent in Truth's eternal quest. 



The' she roll back the curtain of the skies. 

And show the mirrored face of baffled man 
Where 1 had pictured Heaven with childish eyes, 
Truth is my guide alone. O friends of youth, 

Old friends, old faiths, old ways where life began. 
Farewell. I love you all. I follow Truth. 




15 



NOSTALGIA. 



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{Italy, 1882,) 

ENEATH the shadow of the Apennines, 

We long for Ida's crest of lingering snow. 

A sweeter cordial ev'n than Lesbian wines 
The brooks of Ida yet remembered flow. 
On swarthy loggers' faces, all arow 

With Saxon guests, remembered firelight shines. 

We hear the torrent in the gorge below, 
The stormwind roaring thro' Idaean pines. 



By hearthsides yet to be, with jest and song 
And laughter shall those tales be told again, 
Thro' future years, on many a winter night. 
Our outlived dangers shall but knit more strong 
Our love fraternal : for 'twas said aright, 
All joy is sweetened by remembered pain. 







1 6 



''ERE A THOUSAND YEARS ARE TOLD.'' 




Purg. XI, J00-J06. 

088 3-) 

OR thee, the centuries can but bring the time , 

When men, grown more heroic and more sage, 
Are worthier to con thy eternal rhyme, — 

Wherein the life of that dark Middle Age 
Lies clear, to him who brings the power to read, 

As in thy Purgatorio's marble floor -*^ 
The pictured warnings against pride and greed, 

From Hebrew story drawn, and classic lore. 



And whensoever in the days to come 

A poet lives who cannot choose but sing, 
Voicing the longings of the ages dumb, — 

Thro' all his soul thy clarion notes shall ring. 
The Voiceless too, less rare, yet few, who hear, 

Themselves, tho' mute, the eternal harmony. 
Astray in this world's forest dim and drear, 

Shall lofty consolation find in thee. 





17 

The day shall come, when with no lingering dread 
Of thy grim creed mankind shall hear thy song, 

Knowing that for the living, not the dead, 
Fit retribution follows every wrong. 

How toil were sweetened, could we hope to trace 
A single line, that should outlast the storms 

Of centuries, to give that happier race 

Which earth shall bear hereafter, — nobler forms 

With loftier souls, — some echo from our day, 
Wherein we labor that they may be strong, 

Grope toward the light that streams on their far way. 
And learn, — like thee, — to bear the yoke of wrong 
Unbending, trusting Justice, tho' she tarry long. 



i8 



1 


«5 





LA COMMEDIA FINITA* 

088J.) 

HE hundredth leaf! To-day the song is done. 
Not yet the goal of final Rest is won. 
Oh Lord, how long ? Weak are the hands that cling 
To pen, or sword, or staff of wandering. 
Weak throbs the heart that fearless beat and strong 
In bitterest days. The exultant wings of song, — 
That bore me lightly on to heights which men 
Won not before, nor soon shall know again, — 



Are broken now. The vision fades away: 
On earth my feet are heavy, clay on clay: 
The sinful earth of Kingless Italy. 

In this mine hour of black despondency 
I almost fear the Heaven of ceaseless light 
Could never grant the rest I crave to-night. 
Almost I would desire to seek again 
That painless home of lost yet sinless men. 
To greet the laureled singers' brotherhood, 
And pace forevermore their shadowy wood, 
Forevermore of hope and pain bereft. 



19 

The laureled shades! One bitter cup was left, 
Ungrateful Florence, yet for me to drain. 
Uncrowned were 1, alone, of Homer's train. 
And yet it may be that my frame shall rest 
Not all unhonored yet within thy breast. 
Altho' my mortal eyes no more may gaze 
Upon my San Giovanni, and the ways 
My boyish footsteps trod, nor view again 
The hills engarlanding the Arno's plain, 
Yet like the murmur of a distant sea 
The voice of future Florence summons me. 

— The tale of earthly hopes and fears is told. 
Beyond the grave, and death, and time, behold 
Young Beatrice's eyes flame on me as of old! 




20 




ASSOS REMEMBERED. 

(188^.) 

N darkling waves, to-night, and restless sands, 
And Lepethymno's peak, the purple glow 
Of twilight lingers, in the portico 
That looks toward Lesbos Hadji Christos stands, 
And shades his eyes with both uplifted hands, 
Watching the gleaming sails off Molivo, — 
Remembering voices silenced long ago, 
And faces that are dust in faroff lands. 



A memory only are those days of yore, 
A fading picture: yet we hold it dear; 

For the lost circle reunites no more. 

Until, beyond full many a billowy year, 

Perchance, at dusk, on some Hesperian shore, 
Max hails us, as of old, with welcoming cheer. 




2 I 



WITH A VERSION OF ALCESTIS 

(1887.) 




T times, when on a lonely way and long, 

The rain and darkness quench the final gleam 
Of fading twilight, weary pilgrims deem 
That troops of dim majestic figures throng 
The unending corridors of thought along; 

And faintly, far away, they hear, or seem 
To hear, like music from a breaking dream, 
The choric harmonies of Attic song. 



More faint and far and fleeting, gentle friends 
To whom may never come her living voice, 
In the harsh accents of our native speech 
An echo here Alcestis' lover sends. 

If one sweet haunting tone your hearts shall reach, 
So may he doubly in his task rejoice. 




mwp' 



22 



IN ATHENS. 




( 1887.) 

ID thirty centuries of dust and mould 

We giope with hopeful heart and eager eye, 
And hail our treasure-trove if we but spy 
A vase, a coin, a sentence carved of old 
On Attic stone. In reverent hands we hold 

Each message from the Past, and fain would try 
Thro' myriad fragments dimly to descry 
The living glories of the Age of Gold. 



Vainest of dreams! This rifled grave contains 
Of Beauty but the crumbled outward grace. 
The spirit that gave it life, Hellenic then. 
Immortal and forever young remains, 

But flits from land to land, from race to race, 
Nor tarries with degenerate slavish men. 




23 

IN MORTE IMMUTABILITAS. 

Reminiscence of Odyssey XI. 




VER the Westward seas, on the misty Kimmerian 
shoreland, 
Where in the asphodel meadow Persephone's myriads 

wander, 
Many a fleeting form of beloved Achaian companions, 
Many a statelier shade of the dim traditional foretime, 
Greeted the exile Odysseus: — and Heracles, too, an 
eidolon, 

Most unreal of ghosts: for the hero himself at the banquet 
Sits, with his wife, young Hebe, among the Olympic 
immortals. 

Memory, gray old warder, throw open thy portal in 

welcome 
Wide to the dead: our dead. They loved us well in the 

sunshine, 
Death can but make us securer from change and loss 

and oblivion. 



24 

Not the departed we fear, but, only the ghosts of the 

living. 
Bright is the glow of love in their eyes, but it shines not 

upon us. 
Warm is the breath on their lips, but the words of love 

are for others. 
See thou admit not a wraith that casts on the threshold 

a shadow. 










■ f- 



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25 




MY FATHERLAND. 

088^.) 

HE imperial boy had fallen in his pride 
Before the gates of golden Babylon. 
The host, who deemed that priceless treasure won, 
For many a day since then had wandered wide, 
By famine thinned, by savage hordes defied. 

In a deep vale, beneath the setting sun, 
They saw at last a swift black river run, 
While shouting spearmen thronged the farther side. 



Then eagerly, with startled joyous eyes. 
Toward the desponding chief a soldier flew: 
"1 was a slave in Athens, never knew 
"My native country: but I understand 
"The meaning of yon wild barbarian cries, 

"And I believe this is my fatherland!" 
This glimpse have we, no more. Did parents fond. 
Brothers, or kinsmen, hail his late return? 
Or did he, doubly exiled, only yearn 
To greet the Euxine's waves at Trebizond, 



26 



The blue >Egean, and Pallas' towers beyond? 

Mute is the record. We shall never learn. 

But as once more the well-worn page I turn, 
Forever by reluctant schoolboys conned, 

A parable to me the tale appears, 
Of blacker waters in a drearier vale. 

Ah me ! When on that brink we exiles stand, 
As earthly lights and mortal accents fail, 
Shall voices long forgotten reach our ears, 
To tell us we have found our fatherland? 




27 



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CAROLO MORTUO. 

{i888.) 

OGETHER, comrade, widely did we roam; 
In Gotiiic aisles, at wayside shrines, or where 
The slender minarets melt in dusky air 

And Moslems kneel beneath Sofia's dome, 
At vesper chant 'mid hooded monks of Rome, 
We knelt together, reverencing there 
The need that calls the human heart to prayer,— 
And every land of men to us was home. 



A heavier curtain now thy hands upraise: 
Into a darker minster turn thy feet. 
May loving eyes and clasp of welcome greet 
The lover of all mortal hearts and ways, 
And knowledge widen to his eager gaze 

Who followed truth with tireless step and fleet. 





28 



NEUE FRUHLINGSNACHT. 

{/88S.) 

HE voices of my youth with me abide, 

And dim sweet pictures of the long ago. 
When in the Tyrol melts the winter snow, 
And white with foam the torrents leap and glide 
Down each ravine : when Arno's swollen tide 
Threatens the Ponte Vecchio's overthrow : 
When the Spring winds thro' Vallombrosa blow : 
I hear tiieir music, even at thy dear side. 



Nor sadly hear; for now no more may burn 
The fever of unrest. Our hearthfire gleams 

More bright and warm than all remembered joy. 
From fading visions eagerly I turn 

To hear the soft deep breathing of my boy, 
And gurgling laugh that tells of happy dreams. 




'jtC'^: 



29 



LIEBE IN DER FERNE* 

(1889.) 




N youth's unresting storm and stress, 
Thro' absence long and loneliness, 
One memory shone with steadfast ray 
Upon my fickle wandering way, 
As over windswept seas the star 
Of evening shines, serene and far. 



This from my exile drew me home, 
No more in lonely ways to roam : 
The memory of the blue-eyed maid 
Who trustful hands in mine had laid. 
Loving and loved, tho' unaware. 
And promised me — her nightly prayer. 

I wandered East, 1 wander West, 

But doubt no more that " Home is best." 

And if from exile's outmost track 

The maiden's memory drew me back. 

What earthly absence more may part 

From mine the wife's, the mother's heart 



30 

On all my ways her clear eyes shine: 
Her hand is always clasped in mine: 
At every turn, thro' field or street 
I hear the coming of her feet. 
Waking or dreaming, half I miss, 
And half I feel, her lingering kiss. 

(Envoi.) 

Across a thousand miles 1 speed 
The assurance which thou dost not need. 
Of eager brain and throbbing heart 
With thee abides the nobler part. 
Thro' thee alone is life so sweet; 
Without thee, Heaven were incomplete ! 




3J 



THE COLONEL'S FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY. 

(1889.) 




OT for him, surely, to cry "Woe ! Alas ! " 
As the inevitable mile-stones pass. 
How could he wish the tale of years were less ? 
One decade younger, and the bitter stress 
Of war, that woke to life the nation's heart, 
Had found — no youth prepared to play his part 
in that stern drama, but — a child. If so. 
The victory still had been, we doubt; but know 
had lacked the colonel's 



Our chimney-piece 

sword, 
And history's page, for us, its brightest word. 

Still he repines? Let him remember this: 
Of old, the Hamadryad's single kiss 
Made ten years younger even gray-haired men; 
How safe from age is he enfortressed, then, 
Who m his quiver hath so goodly store 
Of darts, and, for the days that are before, 
Companionship assured him that but grows 
Fuller and sweeter as the river flows. 




32 



WRITTEN UPON A PHOTOGRAPR 

( 1894-) 

**HIS little square of black and white, 

Why should it thrill with wild delight, 
Or summon tears that dim my sight? 

A lattice, dark against the sky; 

A gray beard, bent, with downcast eye; 

A garden gate, half open ; why 

Should these be cause for smile or tear? — 
But memories of so many a year, 
Of all we've loved, and lost, are here! 

In yonder spot of deepest gloom. 
For me, with bitter-sweet perfume 
The lillies of our childhood bloom. 

How much I'd give, one hour to be 

A boy beneath the appletree. 

And hear my father speak with me! 





33 



TWO GREETINGS. 

The Coming of La Gascogne. 

{'895-) 

ROM desolate sea-expanses tenanted 

Of mist-wrapt icebergs and unsparing gales, 
Snow-sheeted, into harbor slowly sails, 
Even yet by hungry billows buffeted, 
The vessel bearing those accounted dead. 

A nation's shout of loving welcome hails 
These unknown peasants from the Gallic dales, 
And out of suffering human love is bred. 

If thro' the gate which all must pass in fear, 
Leaving behind our Winter strange and drear. 

Had fared together that wan pilgrim band, 
Doubt not that loving greeting. Heavenly cheer, 
Had welcomed, as we cannot now and here, 

Each shivering exile to a gentler land. 





34 




COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHAPEL* 

{January 25, i8g^ ) 

CROSS the pavement worn with ceaseless tread 
Of many living and unnumbered dead, 
And up the narrow aisle, as if to Mass 
By two and two the black-robed scholars pass. 
The pealing anthem fills these sacred walls : 
And then, with tear and smile, each friend recalls 
The busy happy hours, too quick to end. 
They passed, — so lately! — with an absent friend. 



An alien in your halls may hardly dare 

To day your memories, your grief, to share. 

Though names are uttered, long well-known to fame, 

Faces 1 knew not answer to each name. 

Instinctively your crowded ranks 1 scan. 

Seeking — a pallid, quiet, clear-eyed man. 

The lines of earnest thought, the deeper trace 

Of suffering bravely borne, were in his face. 

With him to pace again your echoing floor, 
To pause a moment at his class-room door 
For the last tidings from the Age of Gold: 
To chat of light qew-thrown on problems old 



35 

By sculptured block from Delphi's hillside steep, 
By statue raised from Argive trenches deep, 
By curving theatre or temple wall: 
So runs my thought : but black the shadows fall 

On hope and memory. Far and far away 

The sun is bright on Hellas' hills to day; 

And he who best of all our eager race 

The deep-cut word, the artist's line, could trace, 

Has reached the city of the violet crown, 

Only in dreamless sleep to lay him down. 

Too soon completed is his absent year. 

He knows not time nor distance, far or near: 

Perchance in loving thought he is among us here. 

Each April will recall the nightingale 

That on Colonos sings melodious 
As when he soothed the way-worn Oedipus; 
And lower, in the wide Cephissian vale. 
The olives of Athene never fail. 
There is even now no spot more glorious 
Than that where Sophocles has bidden us 
To pause, the fairest land on earth to hail. 



36 

By Miiller and Lenormant well might rest 
The frame outworn of the beloved man 

Who joined Teutonic learning, Gallic grace, 
To world-wide breadth of thought; and last, and best, 
A simple manliness wherein we trace 
Franklin's and Lmcoln's type, the true American. 




'^i^SWv 



11 



'*HO PRETTY PAGE/' 

A Retort Courteous, by Auricoma Senescens or 
Goldilocks come to forty year. 

grizzled sage of the double chin. 

And quizzical piercing kindly eye, 
We always meant this rhyme to begin, 
We thought there was time yet wisdom to win, 
We counted on answering '* bye and bye." 

Too soon, we confess, came Forty Year, 
But has not chilled the cozy cheer 

Of the hearth-fire yonder blazing bright. 
Yes, Bonnybell 's married full many a day, 
And not to me, you b'd me say: 
'Tis her tall brown lad from over the way 

Who laughs at the gate with our Jessie to night. 
Those ''cuily gold locks " are grown too thin 
For a thatch to the '' foolish brains " within, 
That did lack sense real gold to win, 

So you claim, no doubt, you were quite half right! 




.38 

Well, pangs far deeper than you foretold 

Teach the easy art of growing old. 

Dust upon dust and mold on mold 
In lands this side and over the sea 

There are forms and faces forever at rest 
As dear and precious to mine and me 
As Gillian or Marian ever could be, 

Or whoever you sang of as nearest and best. 

There are living feet that forget our door; 
There are living voices that ring no more 

Upon eager ears; there are ghostly faces, 
Failure and Poverty, Doubt and Fear, 
That sometimes in at the window peer, 

And seem among us to claim their places. 
That hardest lesson we've learned besides. 
That "nothing so very long abides!" 

And yet, if we could, we would no more try 
To roll back a score of the years gone by. 

And act, think, dream, as we used to do. 
With a boy's crude fancies of love and life. 
Or a youth's hot heart with itself at strife, — 



39 

Be sixteen truly, or twenty-two, 
Than sturdy old Newcome himself would have done, 
Or Esmond, after his course was run, 
Or — gentlest and wisest of cynics — thzn fou! 




40 



EASTWARD WINDOWS. 

''I remember^ I remember/* 

{189^.) 

ERE first upon me fell the light of day: 

Here first, a man, the scholar's lamp 1 burned, 
And the long joy of studious midnights learned: 
Here, eager tho' she was with us to stay, 
Tranquilly greeting Death my sister lay : 

Here too, in these last years, my father yearned 
For rest, by eighty years of service earned: 
And hence his fearless spirit slipt away. 

Thro' yon low windows shine no earthly suns: 
Tis not the Acushnet that swift seaward runs: 

No homes of men against the horizon stand. 
The glow of love and hope and memory falls 
For me upon these trebly sacred walls, 

From the Fair Haven of an unseen land. 



[ 


Mi 


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41 




LES REINES DE UAMOUR- 

ETRARCH eternalizes Laura's charms: 

Dante makes Beatrice forever queen : 
Yet neither nestled in her poet's arms, 
As doth my gentle lady, Wilhelmine. 



Nausicaa, forever fair and young. 

Full long thy faithful liegeman have I been : 
But now 1 swear, no poet yet has sung 

Of one so gracious as my Wilhelmine. 



Father of " golden-tressed Adelaide," 

Your song — and hers — shall keep her memory green : 
Beside her now I set a living maid, — 

My blue-eyed baby daughter, Wilhelmine! 



42 



MEMORIES, 

L Infancy. 




COTTAGE, on a quiet street 

In a decaying seaport town; 
Echoes of many childish feet 

Forever hurrying up and down. 
Above our porch the apple tree 

Its heavy-laden branches flings; 
And just beneath, — how plain I see! — 

The garden gate wide open swings. 



High on its pole the bird house gleams, 

Above the flowers the pear trees bend; 
Long, long, the middle pathway seems. 

That seeks the garden's farthest end: 
Longer than all the marches Fate 

Has led us since, the world around: 
It runs — to yon high Bolted Gate : 

Of life, and thought, the outmost bound. 



43 

n. Childhood* 

Too soon — yet whether soon or late 

1 know not, but — the question rose, 
" What lies beyond the bolted gate?" 

'Tis but a grassy lane, that goes 
A hundred yards or so, and then 

The playground, and the long steep hill 
To the brick schoolhouse, and again 

A dip, and rise, and dip, — until 

The other village comes in sight. 

Of narrower street and lowlier bed, 
Where for a long and dreamless night 

Each outworn pilgrim lays his head. 
Thither our footsteps early turned, 

In childhood, at our mother's side, 
And there our brothers' names we learned, 

Who, before we were born, had died. 
Too soon is heard that sound of dread, 

The clods that on the coffin fall ; 
1 know not when my heart first said 

" This: place of rest shall hold us all." 



44 

m. Youth. 

Yet only in our bitterest loss 

We truly learn. Then, soon or late, 
We whisper low 'mid grass and moss, 

" What lies beyond the Bolted Gate?" 
And so, for thirty years, since then. 

My brother, we have wandered wide, — 
From Ida's wildest, darkest glen 

To the Sierra's snowy side. 
Thro' the world's loveliest paths we've ranged,- 

And back returning, still have said: 
" How much abides, how little changed, 

In the dear home where we were bred!" 



45 

IV. Manhood. 

But thrice in these last bitter years 

We've climbed the hilltop side by side, 
And thrice despite our blinding tears 

The gate of turf has opened wide. 
Short and more short that path has grown 

We follow up the Western hill. 
And this fair world that we have known 

Shrinks, like our childhood's garden, still. 
Oft at the pathway's end we meet 

In thought, and, as the hour grows late, 
Our childish question we repeat : 

" What lies beyond the Bolted Gate?" 




46 



NOTES. 

CN^ostalgia. For a fuller account of the experiences touched 
upon here, reference may be made to a letter in the 5\). V. CP^ah'on 
for 26th March, 1885, and " From Venice to Assos," Atlantic 
Monthly, for April, 1889. 

" In the golden sunlight of an October morning in 1881 our little 
file of four Americans, headed by the gallant Zaptieh, AH Bey, and 
closed by the limping Greek muliteer with his vicious beast, left far 
below us the olive orchards and vineyards of the Adramyttian plain, 
and wound up into the belt of pines on the Southern slope of Mount 
Ida. But at noon the sky was overcast, and two hours later a hasty 
council decided to make at once for the logging camp of the Rumelian 
wood-cutters, the only inhabitants of the upper range. Here for three 
days we shared their rude fare, while the roar of Boreas in the 
pines, and the rushing rain on the leaky roof, almost drowned the 
crackling of the fire of great logs, and the bagpipe, to whose 
screaming tones our swarthy hosts kept time in their uncouth 
dances. * * * We were within an hour's scramble of the summit, 
but when, during a brief lull in the storm, we pushed on to the crest, 
it was shrouded in an impenetrable mist. * * * 

Far dawn in the plain at the Northern base of the ridge, where; 
the free mountain-born river is already enslaved to turn the wheels of 
mills, lies the wretched little Turkish village of Ergilar. When we 
reached the rough street we turned about for a last look, and the rosy 
crest stood out bold and sharp against the sunset sky. Not a clouci 
was to be seen. Like a true Turkish maiden, coy Ida had drawn hen 
veil aside, and was gazing at us in all her loveliness." jl 

"Ere a TJtousand Years are told." The opening lines are a pro-'' 
test against Dante's own words: Purgatorio, xi. ioj-106. 



47 

In iMorte Imtnutabilitas. Compare Odyssey XI, vss. 601-605. 
"Next I beheld great Heracles' might: — yet it was but a phantom. 
"He himself in the circle of gods whose life is eternal 
"Sits at the banquet, to graceful Hebe united in wedlock." 

U4y Fatherland. The incident is narrated in the Anabasis, Book 
IV, chapter viii. 

"They came to the river which divides the country of the Ma- 
crones from the land of the Skythinas. The Macrones, with their 
shields and spears and shirts of haircloth, were drawn up at the 
farther side of the ford. They were shouting to each other and cast- 
ing stones, which fell short into the river. Then one of the light- 
armed soldiers ran up to Xenophon, saying that he had been a slave 
in Athens, but that he understood the speech of these men. ' I think,' 
he added, 'this is my fatherland; and if there is no objection I will 
talk with them.' " 

Columbia College Chapel. Augustus Chapman Merriam, first of 
American epigraphists and a leader among archaeologists, while absent 
from Columbia College upon his " Sabbatical year," died in Athens 
January 19, 1895. The impressive memorial service was held six days 
later. 

The hillock of Colonos, doubly famous as Sophocles' birthplace and 
as the scene of his Oedipus, is now a treeless mound in the Athenian 
plain, surmounted by the headstones of Karl Otfried Muller and 
Charles Lenormant, who also died in Athens. 

^''Ho Tretty 'Page." The ballad of Thackeray, to which retort is 
here made, is called "The Age of Wisdom." 

Eastward Windows. "The front chamber "of many a cottage 
knows similar vicissitudes, as a large family of children throngs the 
home and then scatters into the wide world. The village east of New 
Bedford across the Acushnet river is called Fairhaven. 



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